Skills of Successful IT Project Managers Nannette Napier

Skills of Successful IT Project Managers Nannette Napier Mark Keil Georgia State University Felix Tan Auckland University of Technology

Agenda n n n n Motivation Research Questions Literature Review Methodology Initial Analysis Future Analysis Anticipated Contribution 2

Motivation n 28% success rate for IT projects [Standish Group, 2001] n Project management (PM) skills critical to improving success rate on IT projects n n Experienced project manager one of top 3 critical success factors [Standish Group, 2001] Lack of effective PM skills listed among top five risk factors [Schmidt et al. , 2001] 3

Research Questions n n What are the attributes and skills of highly successful Information Technology Project Managers? How do IT PM skills differ from generic PM skills? 4

Literature Review n Limited research to date n n n Jiang, Klein and Margulis (1998) Day and Bobeva (2003) No comprehensive study regarding the IT PM skill set 5

Methodology n Interviewed 19 IT Project Managers n n n 3 -20 Years of Experience as Project Manager Subjects asked to compare successful and unsuccessful IS Project Managers Used Repertory Grid Technique (Rep. Grid) [Tan and Hunter, 2002] 6

Rep. Grid Technique n Subjects randomly select 3 cards from a stack of 8 index cards n n 6 cards: IT PMs they identify 1 card: “Ideal” IT PM 1 card: “Incompetent” IT PM Constructs are elicited from subjects n “With regard to the skills of successful IT PMs, how are two of these PMs the same and yet different from the third? ” 7

Example Rep. Grid Good Communicating goals, expectations, and roles Flexibility; Know how to tail processes & parameters R a n k 9 6 I d e a l 9 9 N a m e 1 8 7 N a m e 2 5 7 N a m e 3 2 2 N a m e 4 9 9 N a m e 5 5 6 N a m e 6 4 1 I n c o m p e t e n t 1 1 Bad Not communicating Rigid Details/Ladder (Bad) Details/Ladder (good) No team meetings Regular team meetings. Collaboration. Everyone knows expectations and roles of each team member. Allows team members to prioritize and work toward common goals My way or the highway Open to ideas. Knowing how to motivate different people. 8

Rep. Grid Technique n n n The elicitation of constructs was repeated with each interview subject until s/he started repeating ideas Typically, subjects identified 6 -8 individual constructs Interviews continued until saturation was reached (i. e. , no new constructs emerged) 9

Number of New Constructs Elicited with each Interview 10

Advantages of the Rep. Grid Technique n n n Relevant project manager skills emerge naturally from participants Structured interview results in a ranked list of attributes for subsequent analysis Major constructs are identified and written down during the interview 11

Initial Analysis n n Our 19 Interviews generated a total of 40 unique constructs We are in the process of coding for common themes (i. e. Meta Constructs) 12

Example of a Meta Construct n Communication n n Fostering external communication Communicating downward Communicating upward Direct communication Listening 13

Future Analysis n n Complete meta construct analysis Compare these results to the skills reported in the project management literature 15

Anticipated Contribution n Identify critical skill areas for IT PMs n n To help guide curriculum development To aid in hiring decisions and personnel development Provide foundation for measurement instrument to assess IT PM skills Lay groundwork for future research on relationship between IT PM skills and project success 16